Homemade Goat Cheese

Installment #2 of how to make cheese. Here’s the mozzarella post if you missed it!

More tips on the process from Mr. Matt:

Goat cheese is actually way easier to make than the mozzarella, and it’s probably the recommended type of cheese to try for your first attempt. You still need a few specialized items but they’re not difficult to find. Once again, our methods come from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. Just buy a goat cheese kit and you’ll have everything you need (assuming you have a pot and a colander in your kitchen!)

Most recipes are written to turn one gallon of goat milk into about 2 pounds of goat cheese. For these pictures we halved the recipe just because I wanted to experiment with the extra cheese culture.

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You’ll need a non-aluminum pot to heat the milk. Start by adding about a cup of water to it, and bringing it to a boil for 10 minutes to sanitize the pot. I also put our stirring spoon in the pot to sanitize.

After the 10 minute boil, dump out any remaining water, and then pour in the milk.

Heat to 86* on medium, while stirring constantly to evenly distribute the heat.

Once it reaches temp, you simply open your packet of chevre culture, pour it in, and stir for a minute to incorporate!

Cover the pot and place in a warm place for 12-24 hours. Ideally the culture should stay above 75*. Usually the coils on top of your fridge will add some heat, or you can put it in a TV cabinet where the heat from the electronics will maintain temp. Or just stick it in your oven, pour a few cups of boiling water into a bowl, and leave shut. Don’t forget it’s in there!

After 12-24 hours the curds will have separated from the whey and firmed up a bit.

Once again, you’ll want to sanitize the equipment you’re about to use in the next step. Boil a few cups of water in a pot to sanitize a colander, a stretch of cheese cloth (this will come with the goat cheese kit), and a slotted spoon.

Once everything is sanitized (5-10 minutes of boiling), open up the cheesecloth and drape it over the colander.

At this point we need to get the curds into the cloth while leaving behind the whey. If the pot/bowl underneath the colander is big enough you can just pour it all through. Pour slowly so that most of the whey will go through the cloth before any curd lands in there. You can also use a slotted spoon to move the curd over, but this will take some time.

Now tie the corners of the cheese cloth so that it’s a tight ball and hang to let the whey drain out. The draining will take another 12-24 hours, depending on the consistency you’re going for. This can be done at room temp, but in our example we hung the bag in the (beer) fridge because we let the initial fermentation go for the full 24 hours. I figured that was enough time to get some good flavor.

Draining for 24 hours will produce the typical texture you expect from goat cheese, but if you want something that’s more spreadable, consider hanging for less time. Don’t immediately throw away the whey – you can also add a little back to make it more spreadable. The next day you’ve got cheese!

At this point you’ll want to add salt to taste, and any herbs you want. You can also make little pucks and roll them in black pepper, or herbs – whatever you want!

This is so cool! I’d love to make my own cheese someday, but for the time being I’ll leave it up to TJ’s 😉 Goat cheese has become one of my favorite cheeses lately. Have you tried the goat yogurt? I’m a bit more hesitant to try it…

Well the whole point of pretty much any fermented food is first you create an ideal place for microorganisms to grow, and then you add the specific microorganisms you WANT to grow to create the food you like. Unfermented beer = sugary, proteinous, nutrient rich liquid and we add yeast to make sure it becomes “beer” as we know it. Warm milk = sugary, proteinous, nutrient rich liquid, and to becomes cheese it needs certain organisms to become the dominant life. Sanitization just cuts down the possibility of unwanted organisms taking over.

We would make this a lot living in Korea where cheese was so expensive and hard to come by. Setting up a rig was the most difficult part to making it in my experience. We would tie a hair pony tail holder around the top of the cloth and then wrap it tightly around a faucet. That also allowed it to drip into the sink.

This DOES look time consuming, however, I’ve made my fair share of homemade pasta, bread, etc. so I think I could handle this one! I would just need to make sure that maybe the kids are with the grandparents all day to tackle this recipe. Kudos to you for making this at home…nothing beats FRESH homemade food 😉

I’m so excited you post all these cheese making recipes! I love spending weekend time making more stuff from scratch and this seems like a fun one to try! I know for some cheese making procedures you need like…no super pasteurized milk. Is that true for this goat cheese?

OH MY GOSH! Have to do this! I’ve been eating clean for 5 weeks, and I’m slowly introducing cheeses and things backs into my diet. Would you mind if later on I featured this and linked my blog to it? Thanks Kath!

I am loving these posts!! I have been in the beginning stages of making more food from scratch (bread, yogurt, chicken stock, the basics for now.) But these posts inspire me and give me even more ideas!! I can’t wait to try it.